Working on metadata; Symposium on the public domain; News from GLAM in Rennes

Working on metadata

Eugène Trutat

This month, our volunteers have concentrated their work on the metadata mapping in order to perform the batch upload for the Fonds Trutat from the Archives of Toulouse City. We believe it is important to talk about this work, which is basically the behind the scene of the batch upload.

Symposium on the public domain

One of the roundtable of the symposium.

On October 31st was held at the French national Assembly a symposium about the public domain, organised by the group SavoirsCom1 and MP Isabelle Attard. During the day several topics were discussed: the lack of a positive legal definition of the public domain in France, the weaknesses of the public domain in France, reuses of public domain material, and voluntary transfer to the public domain. Adrienne Charmet-Alix was invited to present the role of the public domain in the Wikimedia projects, the vision of the Wikimedia movement regarding copyright on PD works, and actions like GLAM-Wiki or Wiki Loves Monuments. The morning roundtables were moderated by Pierre-Carl Langlais, long-time Wikipedian, public domain activist and Wikimédia France member.

Two workshops were held in the City Archives services of Rennes (Brittany). During this workshop, people were able to discover both archives' resources and Wikipedia. For this event, the Archives release high-resolution digitalized documents under Public Domain.

The Rennes public library held a conference in October in order to present its new online digital library, Les Tablettes rennaises. This website only includes free content under Public Domain. The licence choice was advised by the local wikimedians and the open data promotion group.

Archives nationales

A workshop has been organized on October 1st at the Archives nationales to train 20 archivists so that they can contribute to Wikipedia. Some people from each department were present to learn Wikipedian skills and began to work on articles, which are supposed to use the images they released.

Centre Pompidou

The first workshops have been organized at the Centre Pompidou. About 15 people joined the group to write articles about modern and contemporary art. One workshop is organized every week and the new Wikipedians are both trained by us and visit the museum with curators so that they fully understand the artworks they work on.

In brief

The "rencontres numériques", a meetup organized every year by the French Ministry of Culture about new media and digital practices, took place in the French National Library. A presentation of Wikimédia France's current GLAM projects was held by Benoît Evellin (user:Trizek) and representatives of Wikimédia France’s major GLAMs partners (museums of Versailles, Sèvres, Pompidou, Cluny, and the National Archives).

Following a request from the National Archives to more easily put content punctually on Wikimedia Commons (aside from the batch upload we are helping them with), we experimented with using Upload Campaigns for that purpose. The customized upload wizard would add categories and the partnership banner, and restrict licensing options to the bare needed (presumably, public domain for scans of collections, and CC-BY-SA for other photographs taken by the agents).